Best Places to Dance in Portland, Oregon

Portland, Oregon

Looking for a great place to dance? With 10 years experience in social / partner dancing around Portland (including ballroom, salsa, swing), the following is the list of the best places to dance, ranked within each category and with URL links. People should find this useful, as sometimes online dance information can be somewhat scattered.

Best Places to Salsa Dance in Portland:

1. Mambo Lounge
It’s the biggest dance floor of any regular salsa dance venue and great live music every Saturday night. $10 admission. Mambo lounge doesn’t really have a website, so everyone seems to link to DJ Roger Rumba’s own website (nice for him).

2. Aztec Willies
It’s not a large area, but can be quite lively sometimes on the weekends. Since Mambo Lounge opened, it has taken a sizable chunk of their market share, but it can still be hopping on some days. Live music sometimes. Admission from $6 (no band) to $10 or more on evenings with live music. Unfortunate for them, it looks like they accidentally lost their previous website domain name and that some spammer has it now. But the link above appears to be the only website they have.

3. Andrea’s Cha Cha Room (Grand Cafe)
Not far behind Aztec Willie’s is this small dimly-lit ‘basement’ feeling of a club below the Grand Cafe. The dance floor is a little odd, with a couple pipes and a beam anyone 6′ or taller might hit his/her head on, but other than a few hazards, it can be a nice place to dance. Thursdays seem to be the most popular evening for this venue. Fridays can be ok sometimes too. It can be pretty dead any other times. It is the cheapest place to salsa dance with only $4 or so admission when there’s no band.

4. Satin & Latin
A good dance studio to learn salsa and Casino Rueda (salsa dancing in a circle) and is only $5 for Friday nights. It appeals to a younger crowd, due to it’s non-nightclub atmosphere. They have open dancing after the hour and a half lesson and a great, spacious floor to dance on, but no one stays around. It’s actually strange how people bolt so quickly.

There are a few other studios, smaller clubs and the occasional large event at random places for salsa dancing, but this list is the best you’ll find in Portland on a consistent basis.

Best Places to Swing Dance in Portland:

1. Scottish Rite
Sunday nights is best consistent weekly dance for swing dancing in the Portland area. It includes west coast swing and blues dancing upstairs as part of the admission. $8.

2. Crystal Ballroom
This is an inconsistent swing dance venue because it is a low priority activity for booking. (they make more money off the booze people drink for concerts and other events). So, they often get weird days booked for dancing, such as a Monday night or occasionally a Friday night. But when it is available, it is the best floor you can dance on! It’s really springy and easy on the feet for lively swing dancing. $8. The host of the dance usually switches off between Stumptown dance and Swingtime.

3. PPAA
Swing here on Thursdays is usually pretty good. From my observations, it tends to bring some more experienced dancers. $6.

4. Ambassador Ballroom – Tigard
Located in Tigard, it is the nicest ballroom to dance at in all of Portland metro area, being large, new, and clean. They claim it’s the largest dancefloor area west of the Mississippi or something. There’s a main floor and then two other smaller ballrooms. When they had their opening in 2007 (I think), it was absolutely packed. They also had no air conditioning at the time, so I think it turned away a few folks. But since then, things have settled down, and it just isn’t very busy. Their swing dance on Saturday evenings has been only lightly attended most of the time. It just seems dead sometimes. They have offered tons of dance classes during the week, but was not very well attended. Their biggest open dance of the week is Sunday evenings, and even that is not very busy. It’s an ideal place to dance, but too bad not more people show up. $8

Best Place to Ballroom Dance in Portland:
Ambassador Ballroom – Tigard
Sunday evenings. $5 and includes a quick lesson. More info is listed above.

Best Place to West Coast Swing Dance in Portland:
Bushwhackers – Tualatin
This is a nice dancefloor in a country redneck environment. But the best part is this place is absolutely free. They offer free lessons every week year around, and they are good. You can learn to be an excellent dancer without paying a dime and many of your moves can translate into other dance styles. One of the west coast swing instructors there was the best dance instructor I’ve ever had. It appeals to an older crowd, so I think that’s the reason not more people take advantage of it. $0 for classes and sometimes a small cover for weekend evenings.

Finally, for those into the wild, nightclub-type environment, Portland’s largest dance club is Barracuda.

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These are the best places to dance in Portland for social and partner dancing. A website that is very useful for finding what’s going on is http://portlanddancing.com but double check all the events posted by going to the source, as times/venues change and this list doesn’t always get updated.

Have fun on the dance floor!